Page 3 of Burning Up with the Mountain Man Firefighter

I go home and make dinner. Chicken, rice, steamed broccoli—the same thing I eat every weeknight because the consistency of it keeps one more variable out of my head. I wash the plate, dry it, and put it back in the cabinet, then check the locks, the stove knobs, and the smoke detectors. All three of them, hardwired with battery backup, tested on the first of every month.

I lie down at ten, but I don’t sleep.

The blocked exit.

That’s what keeps arriving every time I close my eyes. Wax pallets and shipping crates stacked against a push-bar door in a room with an open flame. A woman who said I don’t use that door, casual and certain, the same way she told me her fragrance oil needs to be within reach.

She’s been working in that space for years. Surrounded by fire and combustible materials, her only emergency exit buried behind forty-pound boxes she stacked there because the space was wasted otherwise.

I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling.

She’s not my responsibility. The report is filed. The violations are documented. In seventy-two hours, I’ll go back, and either she’ll have cleared the exit and corrected the other three items, or she’ll receive a formal citation and a mandatory follow-up from the district. The system handles it from here. That’s what the system is for.

At 5:45 a.m., I’m in the parking lot of the hardware store on Prospect Street, waiting for them to open.

The Class B extinguisher is on the back wall, third aisle, right where I knew it would be. I pull the one with the correct rated capacity for her square footage and check the manufacture date on the tag. Current. Full charge. I grab a mounting bracket and the right anchors for stone walls, because the Trading Post buildings are 1880s construction, and drywall anchors won’t hold.

The woman at the register rings me up without comment. It’s early enough that Prospect Street is still quiet—just Lea’s coffee shop light glowing at the front of the Trading Post courtyard and the sound of the espresso machine warming up through the propped-open door.

I cross the courtyard with the extinguisher in one hand and the mounting hardware in my jacket pocket. Her shop is already open. I can tell because the smell is already reaching the cobblestones. Beeswax and smoke, warm and faintly sweet underneath something sharper. I caught it yesterday during the inspection, and it followed me back to the station, clinging to my jacket lining and the pages of the clipboard. I hung the jacket on the hook behind my locker and smelled it every time I walked past.

The door is unlocked. I push it open, and the bell rings.

She’s at the workbench. Different station than yesterday, farther from the melting pot. She’s wrapping finished candles in brown paper—folding each one with quick movements—and she doesn’t look up right away. She finishes the candle she’s holding, sets it in the shipping box, and then spots me.

“Lieutenant.”

“Graham,” I correct.

The word comes out before I can stop it, and I don’t know why it matters. It shouldn’t matter.

Her eyes drop to the extinguisher in my hand, then back to my face.

“This is faster than the paperwork,” I say. “Class B, rated for flammable liquids. I’ll mount it by your melting station.”

“You bought me a fire extinguisher.”

“I bought your workshop the correct equipment to meet code.”

She leans one hip against the workbench and watches me. Her hair is down today, loose past her shoulders, and there’s a faint smudge of something on the inside of her wrist. Wax, maybe. Or soot from trimming wicks. She’s in a thin sweater with the sleeves pushed up, and her forearms are bare and steady. I’m looking at them longer than I should.

“Is this standard procedure?” she asks. “Inspectors buying equipment for the businesses they cite?”

“No.”

I say it honestly. Lying to her would take energy I don’t have after a night of no sleep.

Something in her face changes. The guardedness loosens, and her chin drops half an inch. I turn away before I have to think about what that means.

I mount the extinguisher on the stone wall beside the melting station. The masonry bit chews through the old stone slowly, and I work the anchors in by hand, testing each one twice before I hang the bracket.

The mounting height is correct. The pull pin faces outward. The inspection tag is visible. I check it all once, then check it again, and I’m aware the entire time that she’s watching me work in her space. That awareness makes the drill heavier than it is.

When I’m done, I step back and look at the placement. Good. Right.

“Thank you,” she says.

I nod and start collecting the packaging. Done. I should leave. The extinguisher is mounted, the violation is addressed, and the other three items are her responsibility on her timeline. I have no professional reason to still be standing in this workshop.